


No Regrets For Our Youth

by raja815



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: 1960's, AU, Childhood Friends, M/M, Military, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-13
Updated: 2009-10-13
Packaged: 2017-11-16 21:41:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/544130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raja815/pseuds/raja815
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's 1967 in America and everything is in upheaval: the world, the country, their friendship.  Roy just wants to hold on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Regrets For Our Youth

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://fma-fic-contest.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://fma-fic-contest.livejournal.com/)**fma_fic_contest** for the prompt "AU." Just now getting around to reposting it here. Normally I tend to shy from AU's, but I wanted to do my best for the contest and somehow, I really loved the result. O_O It's probably just because I love the sixties. XD
> 
> That said, I didn't have the time to devote to all the research I needed to do for this fic, so you'll have to forgive me if I fudge a few facts and dates. I did do my best to make it as accurate as possible, though, and I have to offer thanks to the bunch of people who helped me out with facts about the pre-lotto draft system and sixties culture in general. Any remaining errors are mine and mine alone. Thanks, guys! :) I also tried to write this in the style of some of those experimantal short stories from the sixties with their wacky tenses, so I hope it reads okay.

Bouncing over potholes in the old road, tires kicking up gravel, dusting everything over with that powdery white dust that turns everything ghostly pale under the moon. Old car, with old friends inside it. Crackly old bastard radio, taken from a different model and jury-rigged into this one, sending out the Monkees in staticky bursts. _I thought love was more or less a given thing…_ and the rumbling sound of the two young men humming along. Here comes a particularly rough patch, and the engine begins to huff and puff its protests.

“Your mother knows you have the car?”

Those are Roy Mustang’s words, but they’re barely audible over the grumblings of the car in question. It’s a 1958 Ford Ranchero, and it’s on its last legs with rust in its rockers and a gummy old engine that even the most patient care can’t make purr anymore. Ready for the bone yard, if only they could afford a replacement. Roy remembers riding in the open back of the little sedan-pickup when it was new, summer air blowing through his hair, hands sticky with melted popsicle, and it makes him feel suddenly, achingly, old.

“Yeah, she knows. We’re fine.” Jean Havoc doesn’t look up from the road, but a small, almost grudging smile tugs at the corner of his mouth, the corner not currently clamped onto his cigarette. Roy wonders if he too is remembering the tremendous day three years before when he, Maes, Gracia, and Jean stole the car and drove down to Dallas to see the Beatles, he and Jean in the front, smoking and singing, and Maes and Gracia, she already six months pregnant by then, cuddled up in the back and laughing at them. When they crawled back home at five AM next day, they all got the bright green Winnie over it from Jean’s ma, even Maes and Gracia, who’d been nineteen and married. Worth it, though. Happier times, those. One of their last real gasses as it turned out, though they hadn’t known that at the time.

“How about the smokes?” Roy taps the dwindling cigarette. Smatter of ash falls, spotting Jean’s worn denim peggers with peppery gray and white. “Does she know you’ve got _them_?”

This is merely an old joke, but Jean answers anyway. “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”

“Jean, Jean, Jean. Whatever happened to ‘honor thy father and mother?’”

“It goes out the window when she’s got me working twelve hours a day behind that little counter. A man needs to relax.” Jean’s been working at the little gas-and-grocery operation his ma owns and operates since 1961, when he was just a thirteen-year-old kid who had to come straight home after school so he could help out. No games with friends. No field trips. No football team, even though it could’ve been his one real success in the public school system. No nothing. So he’s earned the right to be a little resentful. He also feels he’s earned the right to the smokes, which he always pays for even though he could take them from behind the counter for free, though his ma does scold him like a naughty child every time she catches the smell. Oh Jean, it’ll _kill_ you in the end, she always moans. Roy's seen this little scene play out a dozen times, but it always makes him smile.

The road is petering out. Morphing into an overgrown old cow road, just two worn tire tracks in the grass. Not even any gravel here, but it’s September, still dry after the scorching Texas summer, and there’s no danger of getting stuck. Following up the road, then turning through an old fence, and here it is, secluded, dilapidated, far away. A grimy old wreck of a building, covered with creepers and termite trails. It used to be a barn, they think, because of the weird, high roof.

When they were kids the three if them spent whole mornings walking down this way from their town, to play in the ruin. Tag in the old meadows around it, thick with waist-high grass and wildflowers. Hide-and-seek in the old building, the rotten old wood creaking and snapping all around them. Games of war, with Jean and Maes as Americans against Roy (much to his protests) as the rogue Jap, shooting at each other with Jean’s old air rifle, which could do no more damage than a few raised welts even at point-blank range, or miming more deadly weaponry with sticks. When they got older and could drive, they came in the evenings to drink pilfered beers and wax masculine about their daily triumphs and tribulations. Pretty bitchin’ as they say. Once or twice Maes brought Gracia up here along with them, since she’d been dating Maes so long she was almost one of the group, but Jean and Roy never did that with any of their girls. Felt almost like sacrilege.

Jean’s bringing the truck to a stop and killing the radio. As is coasts and stills, Roy grabs the sixpack of beer and the old blanket and Jean takes the rest of his cigarettes, and the second the engine dies and the headlights plunge back to black they climb into the bed of the little pickup, leaning against the back of the cab, spreading the blanket so they won’t get rust stains on their pants. They look out over the fields and the little scrub of nearby forest. Far in the distance, their little town twinkles against the gathering dusk.

Roy takes the churchkey out of his pocket and pops a can. Once, twice. Fizzy sounds as it foams up and he licks the suds away.

“Want a sip?” Roy offers. Jean takes one. Roy offers another and gets declined.

“Gotta drive back,” Jean says, and lights up a fresh cigarette instead. He’s already tossed the first butt into the patch of dusty dirt they’re parked on. Its tiny ember fizzles, but takes a long time to go out. Reminds Roy of the Fourth of July sparklers they’d once shared, when they were tiny children, when they visited Jean’s grandparents on their farm for a few weeks in summer. Jean couldn’t have been more than five then, he himself just seven. When did they get so old?

“Won’t hurt you.” Roy urges, “Cheap beer, my man. Just like making love in a rowboat.”

“Fucking close to water,” Jean finishes the old joke for him. “I know. You have it, I’m fine with these.” Taking another long drag, and the smoke is curling around his face like a frame. Pretty. Roy takes the lighter out of Jean’s other hand and begins to click it absently. The little flame hypnotizes him. He likes fires; they hold a strange fascination for him, always have. When he was a kid, he and Maes sometimes made little bonfires in Maes’ backyard, nursing their burned fingers as best they could while keeping them hidden from prying adult eyes. Even today, sometimes when he’s working late in the university lab the Bunsen burner’s thin blue flames hold him spellbound. Professor Hawkeye knocks a knuckle against his head when he catches Roy ogling the flames and tells him to pay attention or he’ll blow them all sky-high before the Russians even get a chance.

“We haven’t done this in awhile,” Roy mutters as he clicks. Fading green spots of afterimage over his line of vision, hiding anything he tries to look directly at. So he watches out of the corner of his eye instead and puts the lighter back in the other man’s pocket.

“Well. Less fun once the brewski’s legal,” Jean says.

“Still. It’s nice. It was a good idea. A year is too long.”

That’s all he can bring himself to say on the subject so thick and painful in his chest and stomach. Jean’s presence at his left is comfortable and solid as ever it was, but his right arm feels disconcertingly cold. The last time he and Jean came up was two weeks after Maes’ funeral, and he’d done little then but rest his head against Jean’s shoulder and force himself not to cry. He’d promised himself, once he’d grown up and took better control, that he’d never cry again, but this was a hell of a test. A _hell_ of a test. Jean had been upset too, of course he’d been, hadn’t been himself for months after, but even so it hadn’t hit him like it hit Roy. They’d been a de facto triptych as children, bound together by Roy Mustang: Maes his friend from school since kindergarten, and Jean his playmate from home life, because Jean’s ma had watched Roy nights and evenings since Roy was six and Jean just four. So Maes, a year older than Roy and three years older than Jean, had always been more Roy’s friend than Jean’s. His best friend, truth be told. And it was that friendship that got him killed. Riding the bus up to Dallas to visit Roy at school and getting senselessly shot in a phone booth when he stopped to call Gracia to check in on their baby daughter in the wrong part of town. Stupid, trusting fool.

“Hard to work it in, you up at that school of yours all week long. Sleeping nights at your teacher’s house, that’s what Mama Mustang said when I went by to see her at the bar.”

“He’s a brilliant chemist. Teaching me so much more than he has to. He’s recommending me for graduate school, too, did I tell you?”

“Sure, but be honest. You just stay the night to check out that hot daughter of his. What’s her name; Lisa?”

“Riza. And of course that’s not the reason.”

“I dunno why not. That chick wants to _fuck_ you.”

“Be quiet.”

“Better than that scary Armstrong girl you used to date.” Roy suppresses a little shudder and Jean smiles faintly. “She’s a hippie now, you know? Recruited herself a little commune and gone up to California. Her brother’s beside himself.”

“Daisies and draft-card burnings,” Roy nods. A sudden flutter of uncomfortable movement across Jean’s face catches Roy’s eye. He changes the subject; talking about women usually isn’t a good idea with them. It’s been the one consistent sour pit in the otherwise sweet friendship that’s spanned their entire lives.

Between age six and nine, Roy spent three nights a week with Havoc and his ma, who Roy’s adoptive mother paid to watch him while she worked all night at the bar. Jean was so young when Roy began coming over that making fun of Roy when he sometimes cried for his mother or wet his sleeping bag never occurred to him, and he’d enjoyed having a playmate and surrogate sibling to chum around with. Soon the two spent their three weekly sleepovers playing and fighting and loving each other like brothers.

Of course, not everyone’s so accepting, especially not children. Roy was picked on as a kid for the slight Orientalness about his features, ( _“I hear his ma was nothing but a dirty Jap POW!”_ ) because he was adopted ( _“And even_ she _didn’t want him!”_ ) because his adoptive mother did what she did ( _“Well, of course she didn’t; look, she left him to some whore to raise!”_ ) because he was small and smart, and (most of all) because if you teased him hard enough long enough, sometimes he’d start crying, no matter how hard he promised himself he wouldn’t. Jean Havoc (never picked on even though he wore secondhand clothes and barely passed from grade to grade; there was just something about him that the other boys responded to and liked) had cemented their friendship in the infinitely realer world of the schoolyard one day when he’d been eight and Roy ten. Beat the everliving shit out of a kid three years older than himself when he’d walked out to the bus stop on a day Maes was home with the chicken pox and unable to shield Roy from the teasing to find some kid taunting Roy about his mother and his almond-shaped eyes; _Buddha head whoreson, faggot bi--_ and suddenly the kid’s face was a mess of red surrounded by a flurry of fists. Once the kid was lying on the ground, Jean, tall for his age and so strong-looking he sometimes got mistaken for a fourth or a even fifth-grader, had loudly proclaimed “well, who the hell’s gonna be next?” Glaring daggers while blood dripped menacingly from his split lip, and the bus stop kids scattered like pigeons. Things went much better for Roy after that.

Once Roy got older, though, and the girls started realizing he was handsome, and his intelligence, ambition, and natural sense of charm started opening doors for him, things changed. Changed in a big way. Popular all through high school, especially with the girls, all of whom practically lined up to go out with him. Jean, on the other hand, never caught the hang of dating. Remarkably at ease and likable with his masculine peers, he had a real knack for saying just exactly the wrong thing at just exactly the right time when it came to girls he wanted to take out. There were a fair number of fights when some girl Jean had pined over had gone for Roy instead. It was Roy then and ever after who was the one on top, the one in charge, and Jean who found himself outside the inner circle. Any other friendship might’ve ended right there, dead in the water.

But they still have the cement of those early years. Even when knee-deep in petty rivalries, Jean is a constant, comforting presence in Roy’s life, forever looking over him, ready to protect him at a moment’s notice should he need it like all those long years ago at the bus stop, ready to pummel anyone into the ground that dared hurt his friend. Roy knows this. It means the world to him.

Crickets and locusts waking up, their creaky, whiney song thick against the eardrums. Roy drinks quickly, wanting to finish the first one early, before the rest of the cans have time to warm up and become undrinkable. The air out here’s cooling down, but it’s still so humid. Sweat beads at his forehead, under the long tendrils of black hair. He’s grown his out in recent years, like everyone has. Everyone but Jean, of course; he still tries to slick his bangs back, like he did as a kid. It still doesn’t work, either. His bangs defy water, spit, hair oil, even straight grease, sliding away from the neatly combed crest into an unruly mop on his forehead as soon as he steps away from the mirror. Roy often tries to persuade him into a more stylish coif to no avail. Jean will do as he does do. Truthfully, Roy doesn’t mind; a well-groomed Jean just wouldn’t be Jean.

“The bus was awful today,” Roy says, leaning back against the metal of the car hood. Cooling off now, cooler than the sticky air; pleasant. He closes his eyes, content. Jean’s presence is warm at his side. “I’m glad you called me before I left or I might not have come home at all. They’ve got half the drivers routed to taking draftees to medical checks; the whole schedule’s thrown off.”

“…Yeah.” Jean says, absently clearing his throat. “Look, Roy…”

“I have a paper I have to write, too, and Professor Hawkeye wants me to put in some hours with him in the lab. I don’t know how I’ll get it all done.”

“…You didn’t have to come,” Jean mumbles, and Roy’s eyes open. Jean knocks his toe against the car’s rusty bed. It produces an empty, metallic thud.

“I didn’t mean that,” Roy amends. Looks curiously over at his friend. “I wouldn’t do it ‘til the last minute anyway, you know me… is something wrong?”

Jean says nothing. Smoke explodes from his mouth as he sighs. Somewhere far away, someone shoots a gun. September down here is Indian summer; waterfowl season. Somewhere a duck’s breathing its last.

“I haven’t seen you in a few weeks,” Jean says, slow, deliberate.

“I’m sorry. I really am. I like to come back, but I can’t always make time to—”

“Shut up for a second.” Jean looks at his feet; worn out old wedgees, one with a cigarette burn on the toe. “It’s okay. I don’t care that you’re busy. I’m not stupid, I understand. I just… I need to tell you...”

His voice stops cold and instead he reaches down for his pocket. A worn leather wallet, like most of his things almost ready for the dump, is between his fingers and he’s sliding it open, pulling out two pieces of paper, one large and thin, one small and thick. He presses them into Roy’s hands and looks away. Smoke swirls around him in a long, slow exhale.

Government seal on the letter. His name, there at the top, Jean Esmé Havoc. _Report for medical inspection no later than September 18, 1967, to determine aptitude for deployment on…_ Mistake? Please, a mistake… Birthday, bloodtype, address on the draft card. No mistake. No clerical error. Cold, dizzy feeling in Roy’s stomach, like he’s swallowed a massive piece of ice and now intends to sick it up.

“No.” It comes out loud and strong, pure negation. Not real. Can’t be. “You’re too young; they’re only supposed to take the twenty-one-pluses, you aren’t even twenty yet—” The strength is vanishing from his voice, replaced by breathy panic. The coldness at his right side where Maes should’ve been sitting grows as sharp as the shocked coldness in his stomach. _No, not you. Please, not you. Anyone else. But not you._

“I guess they’re running low.” Jean speaks with a constrained little smile. “That’s why all the college kids like you are up in arms. They’re going to—”

“When did you get this? Why did you open it? You could’ve gone and enlisted in the Navy or something; they can’t make you go if you’ve already—”

“That’s illegal now, Roy. You know that. And it got here two weeks ago. I’ve got to go up to Dallas for the med exam on Monday.” Small pause. “I thought I’d go back with you.”

“How could you leave it so long?” Roy’s stomach no longer feels cold; it shakes and tremors as if he’s had far too much coffee. His fingers waver; the letter and Jean’s draft card fall to the metal bed below them. He leaves the where they are. “We won’t have time to write the letters, and we can’t even make calls on a weekend.”

“What letters?” Jean sounds tired. His voice sinks low beneath the reedy screeches of the insects. He grinds his cigarette out; reaches for another. Roy bats his hand away.

“To the draft board. We have to get you out of this; you can’t go, it’s—”

“Roy. I can’t get out of this.”

“Yes you can. Of course you can. You have to. I got a notice to register, and all I had to do was tell them—”

“That you’re at university. I’m not at university. I’m a gas jockey at my ma’s corner store. I’m not doing Uncle Sam any good where I am; they don’t let you off for things like that.”

“But you’re the only son, there’s a clause in there that—”

“Not anymore.” He’s reaching for his cigarettes again, one-handed, the other hand running absently through the mop of his hair. “Not the way they’re going through draftees.” Finding the lighter in the pocket Roy put it in, clicking it on and off in his hands. Roy thinks wildly of newspaper articles, Olivia Armstrong and the hippie’s peace rallies, the student protests far away in New York. Protests. Draft card burnings. He grabs for the lighter.

“Jesus, what’s wrong with you?” Jean snaps. Fist closes around the lighter, protective. He looks at Roy with wide eyes. “You want to get me arrested?”

“I want you get out of this!” Roy knows he’s losing it a little, really freaking out, but he can’t help it. His mind is a slough of memories, it wants to take him everywhere at once and lose him under their heavy murk. He and Jean playing War as kids, standing over him with the air rifle to scream in triumph _“Ha! You’re dead now, I got you!”_ Holding Jean’s head for him after the first time he ever smoked, when he’d had half a pack and spent the whole evening puking up and moaning, leaving Roy to rub his back and stroke his sweaty hair like a concerned parent. Six years old and reaching out under the blankets of Jean’s little bed, taking his hand, the four-year-old’s fist lax and sleepy in his, feeling safe because there was someone these in all the big, wide darkness of the world to lie beside him. Beneath all that, though, the rancid undercurrent under the sweet old memories, it’s Maes he thinks of, Maes lying dead and cold in his coffin, the cold loss that even the warmth of Jean beside him hasn’t been able to leech away.

And who would be there to hold onto him when it was Jean laid out on the slab?

“Go to Mexico. Canada.”

“I’m not going to Canada. Don’t be like this.”

“What the hell am I going to do when they’re scraping you off the ground in some jungle?” He wants to clear his mind, make himself be calm and cool, but he can’t. Memories are crushing him. When they were young, so damn young, and the world was so sweet and so perfect.

“Have a little faith in me.” Incredulous. Smiling with bleak half-amusement. “I haven’t even gotten through boot camp and you’re planning my fucking funeral”

Roy remembers the first night he spent in his dorm room in Dallas after Maes died, feeling the acute loneliness more strongly than ever with Jean no longer there to sit beside him. Panic surges, redoubles. He gropes for another memory, any other, and his mind wants to settle back when they were children, just tiny kids, sleeping in Jean’s bedroom while Roy’s mother worked at the bar and Jean’s ma balanced her store’s finances on the kitchen table two rooms away. She’d started letting him sleep in Jean’s bed with him because when he slept on the floor in his sleeping bag he had nightmares. Even then, the younger boy had been his safety net. Someone to trust, someone to keep him safe. Perfect warmth against the never-ending dark and cold of the long nights.

Oh, he’s losing it. He can’t do this.

Dimly, somewhere miles away from him, Jean is speaking with defeated rationality. Roy can barely hear him under the thunder of his thoughts and the racy jitter of his pulse. He remembers sitting alone in his bed after the funeral, feeling like he’s the only person left on the whole planet. He remembers lying safe beside Jean as a young boy, feeling finally calm enough to drift off to sleep.

“It won’t be so bad, Roy. I’m not doing anything here anyway. No college, no kids, no girl even… I’m as unattached as they come. Even Ma thinks it’s best; always wanted me to be a soldier like Dad was. Freaked out at first but she’s cool now. He'd be real proud of me, she says. At least I’ll get to go over there, see some of the world. Always wanted to see the jungle.”

“Anyone would think you _want_ to go and get your face blown off by the Vietcong,” Roy snaps. His head spins. He remembers how hard he tried not to cry when they came up here last, how Jean had been kind enough to pretend the one stray tear he hadn’t been able to hold back was nothing but a drop of rain from a cloudless sky. Hysteria looms very close to the surface now, huge and thick and coppery as blood.

“I _don’t_ want to go,” Jean sighs. Another cigarette is dangling unlit from his lips. “But I’m trying to make the best of a bad situation, man. Can’t you see that?”

“The medical exam,” Roy says, grasping at the last straw he can find. “You can fail it. They won’t let you go if you fail the exam.”

“Fail how? I haven’t been sick a day in my life. Even my eyesight’s twenty-twenty. Try to calm down, Roy, you’re scaring me.”

Perfect warmth. His safety net. Someone who’s always ready to fight for him at a moment’s notice. Two small boys, holding hands under a lumpy bedspread. Always there. Always protecting.

Doesn’t he owe him the same favor?

“Tell them about this,” he says, the words exploding out of his mouth. Lunging sideways. Hands on his back, warm, strong. Safe. Ripping the cigarette out of his mouth and tossing it away. This is the last chance he has.

He kisses him.

Kisses him hard, forcing his lips open. Tasting cigarette ashes and the oranges he ate after their rushed supper earlier. Stubble at his lips. Hot. Wet. Roy crushes his arms around him, holding him, pulling him in so close. He has never kissed another man before, has never even considered it, but that doesn’t matter. It isn’t bad. It’s good. It’s all good. He’s here, solid in his arms, and he’ll keep him. He loves him and he’ll keep him, Vietnam be damned, Uncle Sam be damned, the whole world be damned. _Mine. My Jean, all mine, you can’t take him, not when I need him so much…_

Sudden, exquisite pain at his side. The kiss breaks as Roy gasps his hurt.

Pulling back with a sharp gasp. Jean’s scrambling back from him, eyes blazing, fist still curled from the sharp blow he’s shot Roy’s ribs.

“What the _hell_ are you doing?” Jean growls. “What the _fuck_ , what the blue _fuck_ are you—”

Roy panting, reaching for him. Panic makes his voice shaky, his eyes wide.

“All you have to do,” words coming breathy and mindless, like a man on the verge of insane collapse, “is… is tell them that. Tell them… tell them I did that, and you liked it. That’s all. That’s all you have to do. They won’t let you in if they think you’re queer, and you’ll be safe and—”

“I _didn’t_ like it, godamnit!” Angry. So angry his hands tremble. Even the crickets have quieted in the face of his rage.

“No one has to _know_ why you failed the physical!” Louder now, trying to match Jean, to make him see reason. Blood pumping hot. “It’s not even a lie, it’s—”

“It _is_ as lie! You think I’m going to let them check some box next to my name, some fucking faggot box, and leave it there for the whole fucking army to see? What the hell were you _thinking_ , doing that? It’s fucking _sick_ , Roy, you’re supposed to be my friend.”

“I _am_ your friend!”

“Then why the hell do you want to pull shit like that?”

“Because I’m not going to let you die before I do!”

Echoing in the sudden silence. _I do, I do, I do…_ Insects slowly take back over.

Jean’s face, dark, trembling with anger.

“It’s all about _you,_ isn’t it?” Jean says. “Always all about you. About how hard is this for _you. I’m_ the one who has to go over there, and all you can think about is how you’re afraid to go on without me holding your fucking _hand!_ ”

“Jean, that isn’t—”

“Oh, yes it is. It’s always like this. When we were kids, when we were at school, it’s always _me_ that’s been so damn lucky to have _you_ , isn’t it. So goddamn self important, like you can fix everything, like you’re calling all the goddamn shots in the world. Even when Maes died, it was always, ‘oh, I should’ve ridden down with him, I should’ve warned him, I should’ve this, I should’ve that.’ Well, let me tell you something, it isn’t about you. Not anymore. I get to be the fucking one in charge for once, here, okay? You don’t get to save me, you don’t get to make this fucking choice!”

“That isn’t the reason. I just want you to be safe; it’s not even a war they’re fighting over there, it’s just a cesspool to keep dumping bodies in. I just want you to be safe.”

“Bullshit. You’re always pulling shit like this. You go away to school and expect everything here to stay the same for you. Expected me to be here, like some fucking puppy every time you needed an easy pick me up. And now you’re upset you won’t have it. I don’t even know why I bothered tonight. I should’ve known you’d do something like this. I could’ve gone out tonight with Heymans and Kain instead. A little normal company for once.” Jean glares at him hard, then drops down to look for the cigarette Roy tossed aside earlier.

“Fucking _kissing_ me,” he grumbles. “Like we’re a couple of faggots in love.”

“I _do_ love you.” He feels his eyes prickling and grits his teeth around the shame of it. “I love you and I need you.”

Silence again. Cicada, cricket, bird and faraway motor.

“No you don’t. You’re just afraid of finally being alone.”

He gets up, leaping over the side of the truck bed, and gets into the cab. The bastard radio clicks on, loud, defiant. Rolling Stones and bursts of noise when the signal falters.

Roy alone now, sitting in the rusty old pickup sedan’s bed. He pops open a new can of beer, but his throat feels achy and the liquid doesn’t want to go down.

 _True?_ He wonders. _Or just angry?_

The beer isn’t enough to kill the lingering taste of his friend on his mouth.

Six years old. Only his second or third week staying nights at the Havocs. Dreams about being lost in long hallways, all by himself. Crying to Esther Havoc when he wakes up, ashamed and cold, his wet pajama bottoms sticking to his legs. _Sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry…_ Crying so hard he thinks he might throw up. Hating it there, wanting his mother. _It’s all right, Roy, dear,_ she says and helps him change, _how about you sleep in bed with Jean tonight, okay? He has bad dreams sometimes, too. You boys can keep each other safe._

 _Keep each other safe._ Roy’s throat works, hot and achy, trying to swallow the beer he doesn’t want. Rolling Stones giving way to The Doors. Last of the daylight leeching away to solid blackness dabbled with the milky splatter of dying summer stars. Soon they’ll disappear, fade away to be replaced by winter constellations.

Six years old, wearing a pair of Jean’s pajamas now, just the right size for him even though Jean is younger. Jean’s so tall for his age. He’ll always be tall, though six-year-old Roy doesn’t know that yet. Jean, deep asleep. Roy’s tears sticky against his hot face as Jean’s ma slides her son over and slips Roy in beside him. He hides his face under the extra pillow as Esther Havoc leaves them. Jean stirs and his voice is sleepy-thick: _What’re you doin’, Roy?_ Nothing, Roy starts to say, but the lie gets lost somewhere and he tells the truth instead. Bad dream. Accident. Wet my pants. Your Ma put me here. I’m scared, Jean, I don’t like the dark. I don’t like it, I don’t like it…

Warm hand against his. Jean’s hands, fresh in this town from an early life on his granddad’s farm, are too young to have yet learned cruelty. Comforting. Jean holds Roy’s hand until the crying stops and he can breathe right again. _Do you still like me?_ Roy hiccups. Ashamed of himself and afraid of the answer. But Jean nods and smiles in the dark and murmurs _sure, Roy, you’re my best friend._ With all the sleepy honesty of the very young. It’s only then that Roy can sleep, dreamlessly, deeply.

Long, slow, rusty creak of the car door. Roy looks up from the beer that’s gone warm and then hot from his hand, despite the growing chill of the night around him.

Jean leaps back up. Metallic, ringing thud of his shoes against the metal. He’s left the radio on behind him, playing softly, covering the sounds of insects, covering the pound of Roy’s heart and the unsteady roll of Roy’s stomach. Unfamiliar music, some band Roy doesn’t know, but it has a British invasion feel to it.

Jean sits down beside Roy. Pulls the edges of the blanket beneath them up, so they’re covered at the shoulders against the chill. September’s a funny month in Texas; so hot days and so cold nights. Jean takes one of the beers Roy left, pops it with the churchkey. Long, slow drinks. No words. The song ends and something by Cream goes up.

“Do you remember,” Roy says, voice as soft and thick as a blanket, when his unsteady throat can no longer hold back his voice. He looks straight ahead, out at the languishing old wreck of a barn and not at Jean. “When I used to spend the night at your house? When we were little?”

“I remember.”

“I used to have to sleep in your bed with you, or—”

“Or you’d have bad dreams and piss all over my sleeping bag. Sure, I remember.”

“Yes.”

Silence for a moment as they listen to the music.

“You said I was your best friend,” Roy says a few minutes later.

“You were my best friend.” Silence. Liquidy gulp as he downs the rest of the can. “You _are_ my best friend.” Clank of metal as he tosses the can away. “You’re all I have to hold me here, you know that? I sure as hell don’t stay for Ma and the store.”

“I’m sorry,” Roy murmurs. “I’m sorry for that. And I’m sorry for earlier.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

Jean sits quietly, looking ahead, then leans sideways until his head rests on Roy’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry, too,” he says. “I didn’t mean the things I said.”

“Why not? They’re probably true.”

“Nah. They’re not true at all.” Quiet for a moment, then allover warmth as Jean puts his arms—his big, strong arms—tight around Roy and hugs him. It does nothing to help the ache in Roy’s throat. “I didn’t mean to get so mad, I…”

“It’s okay, Jean. I’m sorry I—”

“I don’t want to leave,” he whispers against Roy’s collar. “I’m scared to go. I see the reports on the news same as you, and the names in the obituaries, and I… but I have to. No matter what I say, or what happens, they’ll make me go and there’s no other way.”

“I know that.”

“Then why did you kiss me?”

“I…I was being selfish. I wasn’t thinking.”

Music swelling to a climax of bluesy funk. Cicadas quieting as it gets too cold for their liking. Smells of beer and smoke and oranges and sweat as Jean puts his hand on Roy’s cheek and turns his face.

Blue eyes swimming with fear. His face is so young, still with faint traces of acne at his temples. So young and so sweet. They look at each other for a long time, long enough for the song to change. Bob Dylan this time, a blast from their past and the fall of 1963. _Come gather round people, wherever you roam…_

“Was that the only reason?” Jean whispers. Breath warm. Eyes sliding closed. His mouth, his chapped thin lips. The itch of his bangs against Roy’s sweaty forehead. They kiss.

The tormenting wash of memories slides away, leaving them alone in their little moment. Warmer and warmer under the thick wool blanket. The insect sounds fading away. The radio, the breath, the heartbeat. The draft card and letter lie forgotten. Roy’s body aches like it hasn’t for years, like it hasn’t since the first time he made out with a girl. It should feel wrong.

It doesn’t.

They’re panting against each other, holding on so tight. The world is swelling around them like a flood, coming in harsh waves to rip them apart. They hold on.

“It won’t change anything,” Jean warns, his breath against Roy’s neck. “I’ll still have to leave. I can’t tell them, it wouldn’t be fair—”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s not about that. This is just for us.”

“Just for us.”

The perfect little playground of their youth. The dark that had terrified them. The loneliness that drove them together. It’s all here, all now, all their past and present mixed together and they lie down. Holding hands like they once did as children under the covers. Clothes coming off. Fingers over skin. Warm, perfect. Touch here. Kiss there. _Hold me tighter, don’t let me go…_ The insects are silent. Bob Dylan on the radio. Jean makes soft noises and Roy’s fingers shake. _Please… please… please…_ Knowing that it’s all going to end too soon. But it won’t matter. Because in all the latter days and months and years to come, they’ll still have it. Just this once. Just for them.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
